of the various legal schools; and it is enough for a Muslim, as far as faith is concerned, to believe in Allah, His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, the divine decree—both its good and its evil—the resurrection after death; to affirm that nothing whatsoever resembles Allah in any way; that whatever has reached us regarding His exalted attributes is true and must be accepted as it has come; that the Qur’an is the speech and revelation of Allah and is not created; and all similar points on which the ummah is unanimously agreed, for the view of anyone who deviates from that consensus carries no weight. If the community differs over any problematic matter that touches the fundamentals of the religion, our duty is to keep silent, consign the matter to Allah, and say, “Allah and His Messenger know best,” and silence on the issue will suffice us.
May Allah have mercy on Imam Abu Hamid—where is his like in knowledge and virtue?—yet we do not claim that he was protected from error or mistake, and there is to be no blind following in the fundamentals of belief.
205 – Khumays ibn ʿAli ibn Ahmad ibn ʿAli ibn al-Hasan
The imam, the ḥāfiẓ, the hadith scholar of Wāsiṭ, Abū ’l-Karam al-Ḥawzī al-Wāsiṭī.
He heard (hadith) from: Abū ’l-Qāsim ibn al-Busrī, Abū Naṣr al-Zaynabī, ʿĀṣim ibn al-Ḥasan, ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Wāsiṭī al-Nadīm, Yaḥyā ibn Hibat Allah al-Bazzāz, Abū ’l-Fatḥ ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Ḥasan al-Qāḍī, Hibat Allah ibn al-Jalakht, and many others. He held dictation sessions and pronounced transmitters reliable or unreliable.
Reported from him: Abū ’l-Jawāʾiz Saʿd ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm and Abū Ṭāhir al-Salafī,